


Wu

by misha906 (BoopPhysics)



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoopPhysics/pseuds/misha906
Summary: Cauldron plays mahjong.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15
Collections: play stupid games win stupid prizes





	Wu

Rebecca liked Thursdays. 

Thursdays were good days. They weren’t Mondays, the worst day of the week, and they weren’t Saturdays, the best day of the week. They were a happy medium, placed neatly and folded gently in the middle of it all; the day when work became routine again before its precipitous fall into hedonistic weekends of sweetened coffee and long walks in the park at six A.M. Thursday was the mild-mannered middle child that nobody could possibly hate.

More importantly, Rebecca liked Thursdays because Thursday nights were nights she got to experience new things.

“I have absolutely no idea why we can’t turn the air conditioning on,” David said.

Rebecca sighed. “I told you the last six times, it’s for the authenticity of the experience.”

“You’re telling me that there isn’t a single air-conditioned building in Hong Kong?”

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been to Hong Kong.” While that was true, Rebecca had been to many different mahjong parlors around the Los Angeles and San Francisco area—particularly in the nerve clusters of their Chinatowns—and she was confident that they were very accurate at emulating the genuine experience of sitting in a mahjong parlor.

“Then why the hell aren’t we turning the air conditioning on?”

They should turn the air conditioning on, Rebecca acknowledged silently, but doing it out loud would mean losing, and Rebecca was not a loser. 

The four of them sat in the center of the room, situated at the four sides of a rickety, bow-legged square table whose surface was covered by green sack cloth painted with all the colors of an anthrax symbol. The room they were in was, in a word, sweltering. It was not a clinically clean nondescript pure white room of the Cauldron compound but one that featured cracked floor tiles and peeling wall paint; a room that had a ceiling fan that didn’t work with three rapidly dimming light bulbs praying for the day they would end up in a landfill to release them from their flickering, humming purgatory. Condensate gathered on the dirty beer-bottle green windows as the humidity mingled with the heat and rendered the atmosphere of the room a hazy, soupy morass that the gigantic industrial steel fan in the back of the room could only shift a few inches as it struggled to oscillate. 

Even Rebecca, with her immaculate everything, felt the occasional drop of sweat slide down her brow occasionally, yet still ignored David’s perfectly reasonable argument and took her turn instead. She plucked a plastic square from the southern deck and gave it a peek while shielding it from the table behind her hands. Dissatisfied with her luck, she flipped it over and flicked it into the center of the table, where it clacked against all the other discarded pieces. 

“Five of dots,” she said. 

“ _ Pong _ ,” Contessa said quietly as Norman reached out to take his turn. Rebecca raised a hand to stop him.

“What does that mean again?” he asked.

“It means she gets a set of three’s, but they’re out of play and they’re revealed, and then we go back to you,” Rebecca explained as Contessa retrieved the piece and slotted it in her right hand corner. She then began to fiddle with the row of tiles in front of her, resting a finger on each one in turn.

“You know, I have powers that could cool down the room,” David said.

“Don’t you dare,” Rebecca retorted.

“I wouldn’t mind it going down twenty degrees,” Norman spoke up.

“I said, don’t you dare,” Rebecca repeated.

“Why do we need to play in a room that feels like the personification of swamp-ass, again?” David asked.

“It adds authenticity to the experience,” Rebecca said.

“The only authenticity I’m getting is authentic homegrown pit stains right now,” David complained.

Contessa interrupted them all by gently discarding a white slate tile. Everyone took a quick glance at their hands to determine how to proceed. When nobody spoke up, Norman took his turn. 

“I don’t know what this tile is,” he said.

“What does it look like?” Rebecca asked. 

“It looks like a W on top of an M.”

“That’s an eight of bamboo.”

“I’m just saying we’d be having a lot more fun if I didn’t feel like I just got out of a bath made of glue,” David said.

“And I’m just saying you should stop complaining and play,” Rebecca said.

“Does this piece fit into my hand?” Norman asked.

“I don’t know what your hand is, Norman,” Rebecca said.

“I’ve got a piece that looks like a bird—”

“I don’t want to know what your hand is, Norman,” Rebecca said. “That’d be cheating.” And Rebecca wasn’t a cheater. 

Norman looked to his right and put on his best puppy dog eyes in an attempt to entice Contessa to help him out. She shook her head as a way of telling him that she preferred cats. Norman sighed and slid his drawn piece into the center of the table. 

“I have no idea how to play this game,” he said in frustration. 

Rebecca felt the room’s temperature decline two degrees and watched as the minute moisture in the window began to wick itself away. She kicked David from under the table, cracking the fake plastic calf muscles he wore underneath his boots. Why he wore them in a social setting, she would never understand. 

“I gave you a rulebook,” Rebecca said as David clutched his leg in pain. She gave him thirty seconds to draw a power to recover before drawing his next tile for him. 

“It’s a three of dots,” she informed him. 

“Why are you taking my turn for me, that’s cheating,” David said. Rebecca drove another kick to his other calf. The benefit of this decision was twofold. For one, David was in pain. For another, he had to use his powers to focus on healing himself instead of cooling the room down.

“The rulebook is too complicated,” Norman complained.

“That’s a you problem,” Rebecca shot back. David took his piece with all the grace of having both his shins kicked in and spat it right back out into the discarded pool.

“ _ Pong _ ,” Contessa said again. She had two sets of threes revealed now.

“Where did you learn how to play this so well?” Norman asked her.

“I was in a gambling den in Japan with Doctor Mother where I shoved a teenager into a giant pile of cocaine and caused him to trigger. I took a rulebook on the way out because it looked interesting and got Rebecca to learn as well,” she explained.

“Oh,” Norman said. “I think I would have preferred if you just told me you were using your power.”

“I don’t take the easy way out of things, Norman. That’s usually relegated to you,” Contessa said. Norman opened his mouth to protest, but wisely shut it as he saw Rebecca’s leg inch towards him. 

Rebecca took her turn as serenely as one would right after threatening a co-worker’s life. It was just her luck to draw a piece she desperately needed. She slotted it in at the end of her hand and spat a three of bamboo into the pool then arched an eyebrow at Contessa to challenge her. An open invitation of ‘Go ahead, make my day’. Contessa met her head on by folding her hands neatly before her and waited for David to take his turn. 

It took a while, considering that he needed to find whatever powers within his dumpy frame to mend himself. The table ignored his pained groans for the most part. 

“It’s a one of dots,” David eventually panted out, discarding the piece.

The table froze as Contessa called ‘pong’ once more before appending ‘jiao wu’ to the end of the statement. She was close, so very close to winning the entire thing. As much as David and Norman didn’t care, Rebecca did. She side-eyed Norman to urge him to take his turn. He did, and to be expected scrunched up his face as he drew his tile.

“I don’t know—” he began, but was cut off as Rebecca took the piece out of her hands. She handed it back immediately.

“Keep it,” she commanded. 

“But I don’t even know—” Norman began to protest.

“I said keep it,” Rebecca said again. 

“This is cheating,” Contessa said calmly.

“Is not. He doesn’t know the rules. I’m helping him,” Rebecca said.

“But earlier you said—” Norman found himself cut off again as he noticed Rebecca’s foot inch towards him once again. He slotted the piece to the front of his hand and decided to throw out a random one. It was a plain tile with a simple blue square inscribed into it. Rebecca held her breath as Contessa did not immediately take her turn.

“I could,” Contessa said, as though reading her mind.

“You can’t,” Rebecca replied.

“You don’t know that as an absolute.”

“I’ll take my chances. Either call your hand or pick up the next tile.”

Contessa acquiesced, picking the last piece of their current deck. She dragged it along the sack-covered table with an agonizing  _ fwip _ and took a gander at her prize.

  
“ _ Zi mo _ ,” she said, and flipped the piece over along with her hand, showing her victory. Both David and Norman sighed to commemorate the end to this infernal game. Rebecca felt the room drop several degrees once more. She punched both of them in the face.


End file.
